


Undone, Undress

by gingerteaandsympathy



Series: Unexpected [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Drunken Confessions, Emotional Intimacy, F/M, How Do I Tag, followed by a smattering of sexual content, i guess that will have to do, lots and lots of cursing, this is just pointless self indulgence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 19:29:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20314810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingerteaandsympathy/pseuds/gingerteaandsympathy
Summary: in which Malcolm Tucker submits to the mortifying ordeal of being known.





	1. Undone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lotsofthinkythoughts (Mianna)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mianna/gifts), [kallianeira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kallianeira/gifts).

> This little fic wouldn't exist without lotsofthinkythoughts, who helps me brainstorm almost constantly, and is an endless fountain of support. And thank you to kallianeira for pre-reading and loving Rose and Tucker as much as I do.
> 
> Forgive me for anything that doesn't make sense. I did my best to keep track of what everyone's hearts and limbs were doing, but you never can be sure.
> 
> All mistakes are my own, and all the good parts of Tucker and Rose belong to the BBC.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which Malcolm Tucker submits to the mortifying ordeal of being known.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (This fic has been edited as of 3/16/20.)

Rose Tyler’s been bartending for a few years: long enough to know the rhythms of it all, almost as well as she knows her own face. To an outside observer, most nights are the same, with the usual variations. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes louder and sometimes quieter. But always the same sorts of customers—mostly regulars who come in at the usual times and order the usual drinks. Dull as dishwater. 

But Rose, if anyone thought to ask, has got this seemingly-homogenous mass broken down into a few standard subcategories, in increasing likelihood of leaving a decent tip: the “one beer, hard limit” drinkers, the party crowd, and then all manner of drunks.

The third is the most varied subcategory, and one she has most cause to study. There are the polite, apologetic drunks; the drunks with stories to tell; the drunks who go catatonic, staring at the bar top like the half-moon stains and chipping veneer hold some sort of answer; the drunks who get handsy and make acquaintance with the Prentice Family Slap, or at the very least, the Rose Tyler Temper, before being firmly escorted out by someone bigger and brawnier than she.

Really, there isn’t much in the way of unpredictability, on an average, boring night.

But on nights when Malcolm Tucker comes in, things are never exactly average. And they’re _ certainly _never boring.

-

“Back again, Tucker?” Rose greets, voice light. 

It’s late, but the night’s been easy enough thus far. The usual shit. She’s mid-pour on what she knows will be a different customer’s first and only beer of the night. The cheapest on tap, of course. _ Tightwad. _

“Like the clap,” Tucker shoots back, heaving himself onto a stool. His suit jacket is wrinkled deeper than the lines around his mouth, and he looks—to Rose’s trained eyes—like absolute shit. She finishes her pour and shoves the piss-thin beer at the other bloke, already forgotten.

As she approaches, she wipes down the space in front of him, hands moving on instinct. Part of her job is never staying still, always keeping busy. It makes it seem less like she’s hovering, like she’s watching or judging—reminds the patrons that she’s a fixture.

It helps her disappear. Usually.

“What are we drinking tonight?”

“‘We’?” Tucker’s eyebrows pull into an arch. They’re furious, those eyebrows, even when he’s not frowning—which is almost never.

With a shrug, she adds, “On the house.”

Amusement plucks at the edges of his mouth, but doesn’t quite lift it. “I look that bad, huh?”

“You look like a dog ate you up, and then shat you out, and then ate you again.”

He blinks, expression unchanged. “Visceral.”

"I’m trying this new thing: radical honesty.” She’s not. She just likes taking the mick out of one of the most powerful men in England. Plus, it makes it easier to hide how much she fancies him.

Because that’s really the problem, isn’t it? She fancies the arsehole.

“‘Radical honesty,’” he repeats. “Yes, because you were so diplomatic before.”

“You’d know, Doctor Spin. So,” she presses, “what’ll it be?”

After a moment’s hesitation, he says, “_ Merlot_. Something older than you, if you have it.”

It’s her turn to arch a brow, trying not to flinch at the reminder. “I’m twenty-six.”

“Fine,” he shrugs, as if her age is negligibly small: not enough for a decent wine vintage, anyway. “Older than your fucking mum, then. And I’m paying.”

“Alright, Daddy Warbucks,” she answers, shaking her head. His voice sounds even rougher than he looks, craggy and full of edges. From where she stands, it looks as if he doesn’t _ need _wine; what he needs is a cuppa and a full night’s sleep. But she’s just the bartender, not his mum—the visual almost makes her laugh as she pours him a glass. She somehow can’t visualize Tucker as a child, cradled in loving arms. He seems more like he sprung forth, fully-formed and fucking furious.

The pub doesn’t have anything great to offer in terms of wine; the best she can do is no cracks in the stemware and a dusty, unopened bottle of 2011 _pinot_. She presents the drink with a flourish.

“Thanks,” he mumbles. He immediately takes a sip, winces, and then takes another gulp. Rose eyes him, mouth agape, while he steadily empties the glass, tilting his head back, jaw unhinging like a kraken from the depths.

The words “Jesus Christ” escape her, quietly.

Tucker takes a final swallow and then sets down the glass. “If this wine is as old as you, it aged like shit.”

“I think that’s a compliment?”

“I think so, too,” he says with a nod. “Another.”

“Careful, Tucker,” she says, turning around for the bottle. Against her better judgement, she hands it to him, brandishing the peeling label. “This bottle hasn’t yet reached the age of consent. Go easy.”

He looks up at her, blue eyes sporting the grim amusement she’s come to expect from the brutal bureaucrat who occasionally enters her place of employment. Tucker's mouth may be as disingenuous as they come, spewing shit wherever the wind will carry it, but his eyes can’t lie. 

“You’re sick in the head,” he tells her, glancing down at the bottle. He pulls the cork out with unnecessary force, and pours himself another generous glass, nodding to her. "Thanks."

“Twice in one night,” Rose boggles. “How polite.” She faintly wishes another customer a good night and closes out their tab before returning to her spot in front of her most intriguing—and _annoying_—patron, who has started glaring at his wine glass like it killed his puppy.

Not that Tucker probably owns a puppy. Wouldn’t _ that _be something.

“Don’t get used to it,” he replies. He’s barely noticed her momentary absence. All his concentration seems bent on swirling the deep burgundy liquid around his glass in something of a whirlpool. And when another customer hails her, he doesn’t seem to realize she’s gone.

Rose has no choice but to leave him to his silent drinking as the evening winds down, passing with the brisk ease of routine, only marked by discomfort and tension when she checks in on Tucker. Her eyes dart over to him constantly, but he never moves. He just sits, while patrons slowly drift around, and eventually, away.

Eventually, she can’t take the suspense anymore. And anyway, she reasons, there’s no one else to occupy her. There’s only one other customer left, slumped over the bar.

And anyway, Malcolm Tucker never mopes. He bitches, he bollocks, he plots, and he takes the piss out of anyone within a mile radius, but he never _ mopes_. If he’s mad, usually the whole damn bar hears about it. Suffering in silence is _ not _his style.

She drops her damp bar mop in front of him, wiping rapid circles. "Tucker, what the fuck is wrong?"

He continues to pointedly _ not _ look at her, instead scrubbing a hand over his mouth and jaw, where some stubble is growing in. He _ really, _honestly looks like he hasn't slept. "You know, Rose Tyler, you ought to watch that foul mouth of yours—"

"Piss off." She tries not to notice the way he says her name. It’s unlike how anyone else says it. It sounds _ different _ from him, less common. _ Rubbish. _

He keeps going. "Talk too much shit, it'll wreck your career—"

"I wouldn’t call bartending a ‘career,’ exactly."

"Lord knows it's ruined mine."

She falls silent.

_ Oh. _

This was _ bad, _then.

"What happened?"

Tucker doesn’t answer immediately. He starts to refill his wine glass again, despite it not being empty. "D'you know why I come to this pub?" he asks after a moment, voice distant.

She tries to keep her own tone light, she really does, because she doesn’t know what else to do with a Moping Malcolm Tucker. "Because you fancy me?"

He finally looks up at her—smirks, even. Some of the weight seems to lift off his shoulders for a moment, before crashing down again, curling him in on himself. He gestures around them, eyes scanning the emptying bar. "No telly."

Rose doesn’t need to ask why. She’s heard him bang on about the press—_parasites, _ he calls them, _ bastards, zombies_—every name in the book. She’s heard them all, and it’s obvious how he feels.

She begins wiping down some nearby glasses, almost shaking with nervous energy even as her eyes stay locked on the man across the bar. She has a role to play, and she always plays it well.

No matter who is across the bar, she keeps up the act.

No matter how many nights he comes in, she never lets it slip.

"So, you _ don't _fancy me, then?" she asks, the question accompanied by her most impish smile.

Tucker rolls his eyes, and that threat of a smirk sends a ripple of satisfaction through her. His reply of, "didn't say any such thing," further widens her grin in a way that probably looks absurd. But he’s obviously joking, and he doesn’t see her. He’s too busy downing his wine, long fingers loose on the glass.

He swallows. "I resigned today," he finally says. Expressionless.

Her hands stop what they’re doing, frozen mid-motion.

There is no response in the world that would make any sense, could make anything about this better, and she knows it. She knows that Malcolm Tucker's job is his life, and that his world revolves around what happens at 10 Downing Street. She knows he has basically no friends, no time for hobbies, and probably hasn’t had a halfway-decent shag in years. Rose also knows, though she’s quite sure no one else does, that for all his bitching, he _ loves _his job.

As toneless as his voice is, she knows that he cares.

He’s brutal, yes. The way he speaks, the way he deals with people, the way he manipulates anything he can get his hands on. From what she’s seen, he treats politicians like puppets on his string, useful only when they do his bidding.

But he is, at the heart of it all, passionate. His career has been spent acting on conviction, even if it all seems cold and calculated from the outside. He’s been harsh _ because _ he cares about the impact, the trajectory of the change he creates. He _ cares. _

She'd seen it on telly before he ever set foot in the pub. And she’s wondered, always wondered, how everyone else misses it.

Her hands tighten on the rag she’s holding.

For him to give all that up—give up that power, and his political goals, and his vision for the future—is unthinkable. So, the resignation _ hadn't _been voluntary.

Her mind awhirl, she wanders to the other end of the bar and smacks her hand on the wood top, waking the drunk, sleeping patron. He grunts, slams down a handful of cash—enough to cover his drinks, and a tip besides—and then hauls himself off the stool with not so much as a “goodnight.”

"If I'd have known this was a retirement party, I'd have got out the better wine," she says, keeping her voice light as she turns back to Tucker. All around them, the lights glare down on empty tables and she’s relieved that there’s not much else to do besides tidy up and entertain him. All the tabs are closed. Except his, which she plans to close out herself.

Tucker scoffs, lifting the bottle and gesturing with it. "You haven't _ got _better wine."

"Well, a stripper, then," she says casually, counting up the bills in the drawer. "Two strippers, even. Why not go all out? Celebrate." When there’s no reply, she looks up, and he’s staring at her. "What?"

"What are you doing?"

She glances down. She glances up. She narrows her eyes. Maybe he’s more drunk than he looks. "Closing the till."

"I haven't paid," he states, less firmly than he might have. He sounds tired, for all his attempts at acting like he's fine, and she finds herself wanting to run a hand over his brow, smooth away those frown lines. It isn't an unfamiliar impulse. Not with him. But she squashes it just the same.

"I said it was on the house."

"The drink," he argues, "not the whole fucking bottle."

"Who said anything about the bottle? That's not yours. That's mine," she shoots back, walking over and plucking it out of his grasp. To prove her point—and also because she has a feeling this is going to be a long night—Rose tilts the deep green glass back to take a sip. He watches her, eyes sharp: probably looking for a crack in the façade, any indication she might be acting out of pity. As soon as the wine hits her tongue, she winces. It tastes like an ashtray. She swallows. "Christ, that's awful."

"Told you." He swipes the bottle out of her hand and goes back to pouring. How many glasses has he had? Three? Four? More? She hasn't been watching close enough, despite her efforts. But he’s gotten less sweary, which is never a good sign.

As Tucker drains and refills his glass—faster than before, and considerably less steadily; the bottle’s getting dangerously low—she has exactly zero ideas as to what might help him.

Okay, that’s a lie.

She has exactly _ one _ idea, and it is _ not _a good one.

"You know what's better than shitty _pinot noir_?"

Voice heavy, Tucker replies, "I imagine you're going to tell me." His hands rise to massage his temples, leaving his wine glass untended. As a public service, Rose snags it—stopping to take a healthy sip, to sure her up for what she’s about to do—and then pours the rest directly down the drain, along with the dregs in the bottle.

"Tea," she pronounces, voice far more cool and calm than she feels.

He peeks up at her through splayed fingers. And, as if he wants to say something else entirely, he sighs, “fuck.”

“Don’t say no,” Rose hurries to add, “because you don’t actually have a choice.” She can worry about clean-up tomorrow. Right now, she has a quasi-friend who might, just might, need her.

She bends down and retrieves her handbag from under the bar, then steers around to the other side. As she rounds the corner, moving into the empty room, she finds herself giving a small sigh. Something about getting out from behind the bar at the end of the night always fills her with relief—like taking off her bra after a long day, or that first sip of tea with just the right amount of cream, or stepping into a hot shower. She nearly groans. _ God_, she could go for a shower.

But she has other business tonight.

That business is, once again, staring at her with a sort of dazed look.

“What?” she asks, her hand impatiently tightening on the strap of her bag.

Tucker blinks, and then his face returns to his normal, almost painfully blasé expression. “Never seen you on this side of the bar before. I always thought you lot had wheels or something, instead of legs. Fucking… tentacles, or maybe little…” His arm waves toward her in a vague sort of way. “I dunno—maybe insect legs or something.”

“I can see you’ve given this some thought,” Rose snarks. “By ‘you lot,’ d’you mean women, or bartenders specifically?”

“Both,” he answers, grinning—no,_ honestly_, he’s grinning, and she wants to laugh aloud in victory—as he gets up off the stool and walks toward her. She’d never noticed how tall he was, or rather, how much taller his lankiness made him look. The suit and the white shirt, the rapidly-loosening tie… it all makes him feel sort of towering. _ Looming_—that’s the word. She suddenly remembers that she’s dealing with the Prime Minister’s former enforcer, a man who had once been described in the papers as “Iago with a Blackberry.”

But he’s also just a bloke in a bar who needs tea.

Fighting back her nerves, Rose Tyler reaches out, takes Malcolm Tucker’s hand, and pulls him insistently out the door. She is, of course, oblivious to the shell-shocked expression on his face.

She has no idea what she’s doing.

-

“Alright,” she admits, “so there’s some whiskey in the tea.”

Rose holds two cups, one in each hand, and tries not to spill from either of them as she drops into a cross-legged position beside the coffee table. She hasn’t lived in this flat for long, or—well, it was supposed to be more of a temporary thing, which then became a permanent thing. The result is almost no furniture, except what she’s managed to scrounge from charity shops and what Mickey has been able to load up in his car, which isn’t exactly spacious.

She’s done her best with the place, though, and she thinks it probably looks convincingly bohemian. Pillows on the floor, lamps on the floor… mostly everything on the floor. At least the hardwood makes it look nice.

As she hands him his cuppa, bergamot-scented steam rising in the air, Tucker is taking in the space with keen eyes. They’re grey-blue in the lamplight, and remarkably clear for someone who’s made it through the better part of a wine bottle. She finds herself wondering what he thinks. “Nice place,” he finally decrees, with only a faint air of sarcasm.

“Bugger off.”

His lips curve against the rim of his cup. “I’m serious.”

“So am I,” she insists, unable to stop the laugh she feels building in her throat. “Fuck _ off. _ ” She pauses to take a sip of her tea, and the sting of the alcohol draws out a hiss. She’s used the cheap shit; if she’s being honest, all she _ has _is cheap shit. “Blimey. Anyway, I know what you lot are like—politicians. You could probably fit my flat inside just your office, twice.”

Tucker blinks. “Not my office anymore.”

“Shit. Sorry.”

“Oh, fuck off, darling,” he shoots back, rolling his eyes. “No need to spare my feelings.”

"No, really," she insists. She knows _ fuck all _about politics, but that doesn’t stop her from trying to comfort him. "I am. The way it sounds, the PM, the whole party… they're fucked without you."

His voice, when he speaks again, is low and calm. Alarmingly so. "Enough, Rose." But to his credit, he doesn't let the silence settle, or get uncomfortable. As he sets about removing his suit jacket, he prompts her. "So how'd you end up in this shit-hole?"

"Hey!" she protests. "I _ like _this place, thanks ever so."

"Christ, woman, make up your mind." Coat discarded and necktie looser than ever, he looks veritably naked. She’s never seen him dressed down like this—in the news, he was always facing down reporters in a fresh-pressed suit, looking like he was born to do so. At the bar, he was disheveled, maybe, but never _ casual. _ But now he’s rolling up his sleeves, and speaking like he’s teasing her, and she isn’t sure what she thinks of any of it. He tilts until his elbow meets the ground, half-leaning on the cushion and half-lounging across the floor. He looked surprisingly at ease, strangely _ right _on the floor of her flat. She realizes she’s said nothing, but he rescues her. "So, should I insult the place or not?"

"It _ is _ a shit-hole, _ and _I like it," she answers primly, averting her eyes from his exposed forearms. "It's called a both-and statement, Tucker, I'm sure you've heard of it."

"Did you bring me here for a lecture on eastern philosophy?"

"No."

His brow suddenly crumples, and his gaze unnerves her. She imagines it’s the look people get when Tucker’s about to draw out their secrets with nothing but a rusty spoon and his force of will. "What _ did _you bring me here for?"

_ I have no fucking idea, _she thinks. But she can’t say that.

Instead, she gestures with her mug, tea splashing at the lip. "Drink up. I wanna see how well Scotsmen hold their liquor."

Tucker's eyebrow arches. "A damn sight better than Londoners."

-

He’s right.

The ceiling isn't spinning yet, but she knows that these things can begin at any time, and without warning, so it’s probably safest to remain on the floor. In fact, she’s explaining this to Tucker quite carefully, but he doesn't seem to hear her.

From the kitchen, he shouts, "One more?"

"Better make it a double."

"Your funeral, sweetheart."

“Fuck off, Malcolm!” Her voice sounds abrasive in her own ears, and she flinches. At what point in the night did she begin calling him 'Malcolm'? She can’t remember. She never did it at the bar before. And she can’t remember whether he told her to do it, or whether he’s just putting up with it because she’s drunk and belligerent and probably won’t stop, even if he asks nicely, which he never would—

“Only if you ask nicely,” he says, walking—perhaps careening—in through the doorway, two shot glasses in his hands and the bottle tucked under his arm. The sudden parallel to her own thoughts makes her head spin, and she blinks rapidly.

“Jesus,” she mumbles.

“Not here, darling.” He collapses down beside her, having abandoned his cushion and the coffee table in favor of being closer to the kitchen, and the booze. “Just me.”

He’s heavy-handed with the pet names when he’s got a buzz on, she notes, though she can’t decide whether that’s from anything bordering on real affection, or if he’s just forgotten her actual name. She asks him.

He chuckles. “Remember your name? Of course I do, Rachel. Or is it Regina? Rebecca?”

An arm—hers, _her _arm—flings out and smacks him. She isn’t sure where her hand lands, she just drops it, suddenly very tired. “You’re a cunt,” she sighs.

“Rose,” Tucker says seriously, and he’s leaning down a bit, and the only thing remotely in focus is his jaw, and it’s a good jaw, she thinks. Probably a very good jaw, by anyone’s standards. Certainly by hers. “D’you want this shot of horse piss you call whiskey, or am I gonna have to take it for you?” His voice sounds very tender, and almost like he’s looking out for her wellbeing, which certainly isn’t possible. She’s supposed to be taking care of _ him. _

She suddenly remembers.

_ Christ, he essentially got fired today. _

“Rose?”

Somehow, she’s sitting up. Her hand is wrapped around one of his, very tight, while his other hand holds a shot-glass, halfway to his mouth. His skin is warm and dry and she can feel the bones of his knuckles in a way that makes her want to rub her hand back and forth, shift the skin under her fingers. She gives in to the impulse, and it feels strange and satisfying. He’s human. Skin and bone.

He’s eyeing her, and she knows she has to say something, so very seriously, she asks, “Malcolm, ‘re you… okay?”

There’s a moment where he’s silent, eyes darting back and forth between hers, looking completely caught off guard. She’s never seen him flounder before. He must be _ much _drunker than he looks.

This is confirmed by the sudden, sloppy grin that bursts across his face. “Careful, sweetheart,” is all he says, abruptly knocking back the shot he’s holding, and then—wrenching his other hand out of her grasp—hers right after. When his jaw rights itself in her line of vision, she just stares at it.

“No, ‘m serious.”

“I know you are,” he says. His mouth forms a tight line. And then he closes his eyes. “Fuck, I’m too old for this.”

“Drinking?”

He shakes his head, eyes still closed. “To be sitting here, with you, for a start.” And then he looks at her. “And certainly to be starting over.” He uncorks the bottle that’s sitting beside him, and Rose sees that his hand is sort of faintly shaking, his wedding ring clinking against the glass. She wants to touch him again, hold him steady, but she doesn’t. She probably couldn’t.

Instead she says, “Well, you’re too young t’ retire.”

Once again, he hesitates. And this time, he laughs. “Sodding hell, you’re an optimistic one, aren’t you?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “I’ve never understood optimists. Is it just that you lot _ love _ standing under a fountain of piss and calling it rain? Or are you all genuinely so _ fucking delusional _that you can’t smell what’s around you?” His accent always brings a brightness, a rhythm to his speech that tends to hide the darkness beneath, coating it so you hardly know you’ve been shanked until the blood starts pouring from your gut. But when he’s drunk, it’s so thick as to be nearly incomprehensible. And right now, his speech is tumbling along like anything; she struggles to parse it.

“I mean, for fuck’s sake.” He’s warming up now, picking up additional speed, and Rose feels like she’s about to witness one of those famous Malcolm Tucker Bollockings, only she’s not the witness, she’s the _ subject_, and she should be terrified, but all she can think about is the mouth shaping the words and the fact that he _ lost his job today. _ So, she stays quiet while he says, “For fuck’s sake, look around you. There are homeless people in this city living better than you, darling. They’re certainly _ drinking _better than you, and they don’t have to spend all night on their feet, serving piss-water to washed-up hacks with more misery than money in their pockets!” She’s briefly distracted by the movements of his hands, fingers spread wide, arms reaching out as if beseeching her. She wonders if his rants are always this pleading, or if maybe she’s the only person who can see it.

She doesn’t have the energy to be offended by his insults. Her flat _ is _ a shambles. Her _ life, _actually, is sort of a shambles.

At least it’s her own shambles now.

“Anyway, how _ did _ a nice girl like you end up entertaining England’s Biggest Fuckup, voted by the British public as Most Likely to Take a Strap Up the Arse from Steve _ Fucking _ Fleming? Where _ exactly _ did your life go so _ spectacularly _ wrong that you ended up sitting here, in a flat with no furniture, with a disgraced former-Director of Communications, who is _ literally _ twice your age and drinking all your fucking booze? Riddle me _ that, _sweetheart.”

Rose sighs. “Was there an actual question in there, Malcolm—”

“And _ stop _calling me fucking Malcolm! You don’t know me!”

“—or am I just supposed to bear witness to your pity wank in respectful silence?”

“Oh, is that what you think this is?” he roars. His eyebrows are everywhere now, more expressive than the entire rest of his body, which is really saying something. She’s having trouble keeping track of them, actually… or maybe that’s the booze. “You think this is self _ pity_? No, darling, this is _ loathing. _ You heard me right: fucking _ self _ fucking _ loathing_.”

His voice suddenly drops, and so does her stomach. “Y’know, I’ve worked in politics for as long as you’ve been alive. I’ve been all over the goddamn place, passed from department to department like a mingey hot potato with crotch crickets, but I never left this party. Because I thought—I fucking _ thought_—that I was on the right side. The good guys. The side that gave a shit about making decent policies. And sure, there have been fuck-ups and fuck-wits and I’ve made a tit of myself more than once, but I’ve spent _ years _ of my life—I won’t call them the best years, because that’s implying there’s some sort of high point in this endless slog of shit-shoveling— _ years _working for these people. People who turned out to be corrupt, and stupid, and more ineffectual than burn cream used as personal fucking lubricant. People whose fires I don’t have enough piss in me to put out.

“At some point, Rose, I realized that the whole thing… it’s fucking worthless.” His shoulders sag even as his arm makes a furious, swiping gesture. It’s the contradiction inherent to him—dancing along the line between not giving a fuck and complete, obsessive intensity. It’s the same thing that brought him to her bar to vent his frustration, like someone else might bemoan a difficult spouse. “Because _ look _ at me. Miserable, fifty-year-old divorcé, put out of a job—a job, by the way, that shouldn’t even exist, because the whole _ concept _ of it is _ putrid, _ utterly reprehensible—purely because I was a contemptible… fucking… _ arsehole. _ And it makes me think, maybe it’s not working for shitty fuckwits that made me into a horrible person. Maybe it’s that I was a horrible person to start, and that’s why I put up for these miserable cunts for so long. Like a pig rolling in shit—I _ reveled _in it.”

It feels as if they’ve arrived somewhere, finally, because Malcolm’s chest is heaving a bit from the exertion, and his mouth is just sort of hanging open, and he’s looking at her like she’s got a lifeline to throw him, but she hasn’t got anything of the kind. Her hands twitch in her lap, but she doesn’t reach for him, even though she wants to.

God, she _ wants _to.

Why does she want to? Why does she _ always _want to?

“Tucker,” she says instead, “d’you know why… why I work at that pub?”

He doesn’t answer, because he’s too busy staring at her floor.

“It’s ‘cos I don’t have my A-levels.” She watches the bottle lift to his lips, and lower again, and she sees the faint sheen of liquid left behind. But he’s still not looking at her. She takes a steadying breath, decides to go on anyway. He’ll listen, or he won’t, but she has to _ try. _“There was this bloke. His name… doesn’t matter. He was in a band, and I was sixteen. I was rubbish in school anyway, an’ it was easy for him to talk me into dropping out, an’ I did, an’ I moved into his bedsit. Got a job, paid his rent. It was… stupid of me.”

The odor of stale cigarettes and the weight of Jimmy’s hands press against her, even though she’s somewhere, some_ when _ else—separated by most of London and nine long months. It stops her story cold in her throat.

“He wasn’t a good man,” she finally says, voice heavy.

“No such thing as a good man.”

“Yes, well, some ‘re worse than others,” she bites out. Tucker finally looks up at her and, like a flinch from a blow, her eyes drop. She’s unable to bear the look he’s giving her. Now she knows why he feared her pity, and her voice shakes as she continues. “Anyway, that’s not th’ point. Th’ point is that he wrecked my life, and I let ‘im. For _ years_, I let that… that _ bastard _ tell me I was nothing. I may not be as old as you, or seen what you’ve seen—Lord knows ’ve not committed half so many war crimes, or staged any ridiculous _ coups_.” She hears his faint snort of amusement, and it helps, in a small way. But she can’t stop wringing her hands. “But I’ve fucked up, royally. I’ve ruined m’ own life, and I’ve wanted to die from the sheer… from the _ force _of hating myself.

“But, Tucker,” and she can’t do it anymore. Her hand reaches out—her turn for a lifeline. He’s stone still under her grasp. “If I spend m’life… more of it, anyway… hating myself, _ he wins_. It’s just more time he spends owning me, controlling me.” She practically spits the words, ejecting them with a force that should do the man beside her proud.

It’s the faint shift of his skin against hers, the warmth it generates, that finally breaks the spell and lets her look up. She glares at him; she glares at him like _ she’s _ the one delivering a bollocking. “An’ maybe you have more to regret, because you’ve been th’ bigger arsehole—maybe your fuck-ups have ruined more lives than mine—but that doesn’t change the fact that if you spend your life hating what you are and drowning in what you’ve done, _ they win_.”

He’s looking at her. Just looking.

She can’t quite get used to the weight of that look, or figure out what it’s supposed to mean. She imagines most people fail spectacularly at interpreting Malcolm Tucker’s expressions, but she’s historically been rather good at the exercise.

This expression is foreign, though, and confusing, and also sort of dark and blurry ‘round the edges. Though that’s more the alcohol than anything.

“Bloody hell,” she sighs. “I’m pissed.”

“How long’ve you been working on that one, love?” Tucker laughs. The tension that’s built up in the room diffuses under the pressure of the short, sharp sound.

“Basically since I dumped Jimmy,” she admits, relieved to let out her own halting laugh. It feels like the weight has left her chest, and is now concentrated in the tips of her fingers where they’re touching.

“Right, he’s called Jimmy. What’s the twat’s last name, then?”

She shakes her head, grinning. “I know better than t’ tell the Hitman of Downing Street.”

“Nobody calls me that,” he insists, waving her off. She can tell he’s secretly flattered.

“Not to your face, maybe. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. ‘S been months now.” His thumb is running a distracting line over her skin. “I’m free.”

He sounds a bit breathless when he says, “Good.”

Rose has never stopped to examine her fledgling crush on the aging political war machine who stops by her bar once or twice a month. At first, it had just been the strangeness of his presence—smart suits and the scathing commentary and the shockingly generous tips. The sharp jawline, the shrewd eyes, the silver hair. He was _ interesting. _She didn’t overthink it, because she didn’t need to—not until right this second, when he’s sat with her hand tucked in his, displaying an uncharacteristic amount of warmth and calm. She could attribute it to the undone buttons around his collar and the loosening of his professional constraints, or maybe to the dangerous blend of much wine and even more whiskey.

But she finds she doesn’t _ want _ to. Because this feels more like _ him _ than any other version of _ him _she’s encountered.

She wonders what he’d have been like if he’d never gotten into politics. Got a job as a teacher, maybe, or an accountant. She wonders if he’d have such deep lines on his face, and if he’d swear so much, and if he’d still be a miserable divorcé, or if he’d still have—somehow—ended up here with her.

“Don’t do that,” he says.

She blinks, breaking her gaze. “What?”

“You know what.” His voice is careful.

For the first time, she realizes why he’s been avoiding her eyes. “You’re scared.”

Flatly, “No.” It’s a lie. She can hear it. A deaf woman could hear it; a blind woman could see it. It’s written all over more than just his face. It’s all over _ everything_, now that she’s looking for it: vulnerability.

“You’re scared I might like you,” she continues, pulling back to look at him. “You don’t know for sure, but you suspect it, and you’re fucking _ terrified. _”

“Fuck off, darling.” Tucker’s eyes are shuttered.

“No,” she insists. She’s suddenly grateful that she’s drunk, because if she’s drunk, she can’t be blamed. For this, for what she’s about to say, and for what she’s about to do. “Thing is, Malcolm Tucker—you… you’re a control freak. You have to make sure everything around you goes according to your grand, Machiavellian scheme. Y’ find dissent, find snags in the fabric, and y’ stamp them out, flatten it. But you’re realizing now, huh? Thought you could scare me off with all the shit you’ve done, but ’m still here, and I still don’t hate you.” She can’t help but feel a little victorious, because he looks more than a little shamed. “You’d prefer it, wouldn’t you?—to be universally reviled. T’ be hated, and feared, and… fucking _ shunned _ on what’s probably the shittiest day of your life.” She points a finger into his face, or roughly so. “Well, you can _ fuck off_. I see through your shit, and you can’t make me hate you.”

He groans. “Rose, _enough. _Enough of this soap opera EastEnders bullshit. Just admit you have daddy issues and move the fuck on.”

“Admit you’re scared I might like you, because then you might have to admit there’s something worth liking, and then you’d have to put in a goddamn effort,” she counters, voice rising.

“Even if I _ wanted _ to do that,” he veritably shouts, “I _ couldn’t_, because you’re talking such incomprehensible _ shite _ that I can barely make out the point you’re orbiting, but _ never fucking reaching. _”

Rose grins, and it’s got fangs in it. “I was right. You do fancy me.”

“Once again, even if I did—_ which_, darling, is an illusion on your part and probably grounds for being institutionalized—”

“Call me ‘darling’ again, it’s sexy.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he rushes out. “Even if I _ did, _I have a whole drawer full of paperwork—you’d love it, color-coded, the whole fucking thing—and it’s just labeled ‘Reasons Why I’m Never Doing That Shit Again.’ And it’s full of divorce papers, and the deed to a house I no longer own—”

“Out of curiosity, is this drawer at your office? The office where you no longer work?” She’s enjoying needling him, watching the blood rise up his neck and into his cheeks. She’s seen shades of Tucker tonight that she never thought she’d see, and so far, this one’s her favorite. Pink cheeks. Off-balance.

“—and it’s got one whole file—one big, fat, fucking folder, size of your ego—full of receipts for child support payments. Did you know _ that_? Know I have a kid? ‘Course you don’t,” he rants, “I kept it fucking quiet, of course, and then there’s the fact that you don’t actually _ know _ me. Anyway, that’s a whole file in itself. Which of the baby photos I get to keep, and the little… fucking colored pencil drawings that I’m not in, because I was never home, because I was too busy licking the PM’s arsehole like it was a fucking lolly. And there’s a piece of paper that says I get to see him—my son—every weekend, and every other holiday. It’s a brilliant system, Rose,” he rants, voice full of false earnestness. “Very efficient. Effective. Good at keeping me out of,” he gestures in the space between them, his long fingers filling the too-small gap, “situations like _ this. _”

“What’s his name?”

“My son?”

“Yeah.”

Tucker’s brow contracts, and the lines are like mountain ridges, distant and cold. “Fuck you, why should I tell you?”

“So that I can know, and we can move the fuck on. But,” she holds up her hands in mock-surrender, “if you don’t want to, that’s fine. It doesn’t change the fact that I like you. Though, Jesus Christ, Malcolm, you’ve got enough baggage to fill the cargo hold on a plane—_several _planes, actually.” She takes a deep breath. “Listen, I’m not proposing we run off into the bloody sunset together, get married, shag our way across the country while you’re living in rose-tinted retirement; you probably can’t keep it up anyway. I’m not even proposing we do anything other than what we’re doing right now.”

“Sitting on your arse-flatteningly uncomfortable floor and drinking to the point of liver damage?”

She rolls her eyes. “Being _ friends_.”

“Oh, is _ that _what this is?” he asks, his eyebrows rising toward his hairline. “Could’ve fooled me. I thought this was a fucking… interrogation!”

“Malcolm,” she sighs. “I’m tired. I’m drunk. And you’re right, my bum hurts.”

“You need a sofa,” he says firmly.

“And ’ve run out of energy to argue with you. So, will you just… just shut the fuck up, and sit here, and watch telly with me?”

He eyes her like she’s a bomb on a dangerously short fuse, but slowly, he shifts closer to her, so he’s in front of the television set. It’s the only thing not on the floor. 

Rose gropes around in the dim light for the remote and, once it’s located, sets about finding something for them to watch. They agree on virtually nothing, she’s amused—if not _ surprised_—to find out. Eventually, he rips the remote out of her hands and clicks at random, pausing on a suitably boring documentary. He’s about to click away when she stops him. “No, this ‘s fine,” she insists, speech now slurring from sleep rather than inebriation. “It’ll knock me right out.”

He eyes her. “You’re gonna fucking sleep on me, aren’t you?”

“Yep,” she says, cheerfully popping the ‘p.’

“Christ.”

“Told you I didn’t need a couch.”

“Well,” he sighs as she settles into the space over his heart, “at least if you’re asleep, you’re not fucking _ talking_.”


	2. Undress

“Rose.”

Breath tickles her hair. Her whole body feels warm and loose and languid, and she nestles her nose deeper into the source of the warmth.

“Fuck’s sake, woman. Grip like a python.”

_ Oh. Tucker. _

“You love it,” she rasps. Her throat is parched, and speaking is difficult. Actually, speaking is quite uncomfortable, as is swallowing.

“The arms are fine; it’s the drool that’s getting unpleasant. Now,” and he begins prying her away from him, and she groans, because it’s _ very _ disagreeable. Her eyes blink open, and Malcolm is looking down his nose at her. His own eyes are bloodshot, and blurred, and it looks like he’s been sleeping, too. “Up you get. Water, first, and some paracetamol for the headache, and then… I’m assuming you have a mattress somewhere in this barren place? Maybe on the floor in the garage, with the bedbugs and the sewer rats? Does this place _ have _a garage, or is it on-street parking?”

“Blimey, you’re worse than the people on telly. No bloody off switch.” Rose gripes, finally managing to sit upright. She rubs her eyes, probably smearing her mascara everywhere, but she can’t bring herself to care.

“I _ am _the people on telly.”

She groans. “D’you ever shut up?”

“No, and I sleep with my eyes open. _ Up, _ I said, up you go.” He pulls her to her feet and guides her into the kitchen with a slow, strange patience that only endears him further. He reaches for the glasses on the high shelf, since she hasn’t done dishes in an embarrassingly long time, and when her arm gets tired halfway through filling it, he takes the glass himself and finishes. He placidly follows her sleepy, ill-articulated instructions on where to find the paracetamol—_last drawer on the left, no, my left, second down, in the back, but not the one with the sharpie-pen “M” on the lid, because that’s actually got… fine, it’s got marijuana inside… yes, it’s the other one. _ And then he walks her into her room, footsteps light, navigating surprisingly well in the dark. He watches her finish her water, and he keeps her from just _ falling _ onto her mattress—which, yes, is currently just on the floor, but she’s getting a bedframe _ soon_—and he even goes so far as to make some kind of cursory effort at tucking her in, which she puts a stop to, because it’s just too much.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” she whispers.

He hesitates. Whispers, “Yes.”

“What if I asked you not to?”

The pause is longer this time. She can tell he’s thinking hard, trying to find a way out of this, but the trouble is, she’s not actually demanded anything. There’s no loophole he needs to wriggle through, no negotiating to be done. She’s just asked a question. “I’d stay,” he says finally, his voice low.

“Don’t go,” she says. Immediate. She knows she wants him to, and she knows why.

He sighs. “Shite. Okay.”

Her smile invisible in the darkness, Rose rolls over to make room for him. She feels the mattress depress with a giddy satisfaction that not even exhaustion can dull. She hears the friction of fabric as he unbuttons his button-down, and pulls it off, and throws it somewhere off to the side—along with, presumably, all his sense of self-preservation. And then he lays out on the mattress beside her, though he won’t go so far as to slide under the covers. She doesn’t begrudge him this little distance when she’s already pulled him so painfully close all evening, through so much shit and self-exploration.

But she does draw her hand out from under the blanket and rest it on his.

“I was s’posed to be comforting _ you_, you know.” _ Not the other way round. _

His fingers are still for a moment. And then they lace through hers, warm palm pressed to warm palm.

Rose’s breathing begins to slow, and her eyelids flutter, because it’s dark and she’s warm and deliciously comfortable, and for once, not alone. And then he’s moving, tugging her hand upwards. It’s not a far distance to travel, but he hesitates through it, pausing more than once as if locked in some kind of internal conflict. But slowly, he raises her hand to his face. To his mouth. To his lips, which press against the back of her hand in a soft, unmistakable kiss.

She doesn’t move, or breathe. Just stays, just lets herself be still under his mouth. Except, maybe just a little bit, she’s smiling. She falls asleep like that, with her hand against his mouth, and when she wakes again, she’s still smiling.

-

Waking up next to a still-sleeping former-Director of Communications for the British Government is like waking up next to any other incredibly dangerous and unpredictable creature that just happens to be presently unconscious.

Rose, however, has always somewhat lacked effective self-preservation skills, which means she wakes up with half of her body thrown on top of said creature, her hands somehow tangled in the thin cotton of an undershirt that smells like whiskey and aftershave and, as consciousness starts to seep in, a bit like drunken confessions and emotional intimacy and other—again, _ dangerous_—things. She breathes it in, and she smiles, and she sighs.

She disentangles herself from her bedmate cautiously, but it doesn't actually matter, because Tucker is solidly asleep. His eyelids are fluttering, pale lashes flicking, and his lower lip has fallen into something that, on a less severe and nationally recognizable face, might be called a pout.

When she leans back and lets herself really at him, it's partly motivated by a sort of strange, sick fascination, and partly just for the sheer pleasure of doing so. Seeing Tucker with his eyes closed has such a strange feeling to it, and she finds herself just… _ looking, _ for quite some time. He's rarely disarmed—the previous night of drunken vulnerability notwithstanding—and _ never _ at ease. But there he is. In her bed, in a shirt where she can see his fucking _ clavicle, _and he's asleep.

He's asleep and he's _ lovely. _

She laughs.

It's too loud to be a first-thing-in-the-morning sort of sound, and she clasps her hand over her mouth to stop the tail end it, but it's too late. One of Tucker's eyes has cracked open and is looking over in her direction, sliding, slow as a tortoise and equally as unnerving. She laughs again, and this time she can't manage to stop it. "Fuck," she laughs.

"What?" His voice is gruff, and very low, and coffee-rich.

“So, you _ do _sleep with your eyes closed," she grins, "just like the rest of us mortals.”

His eye slides shut again, and a hint of a smirk twists his lips. "Who the fuck says I was sleeping?"

"I do," she says confidently, nestling back into her pillow, the one she'd abandoned at some point in the night in favor of Tucker's chest. She's not quite brave enough to reclaim that spot, so she settles for lying on her side, propped up on her elbow, enjoying the bump in his nose and waiting for his eyelids to flutter again. She wants to touch his face, but knows better than to try. He'd probably swat at her like he would a fly.

"Human lie detector, you are," he finally says, amused. "Are you for hire?"

"I’ll do most things for the right price."

This feels like flirting—like surprisingly _ normal _flirting. He's not insulted her once.

"Well, I'm certainly not paying for this overnight stay," he says, clearing his throat. "This mattress has more lumps than the waiting room at an oncologist's office. Felt like the Princess and the fucking Pea, only the entire goddamn mattress is just… bloody peas."

_ And there it is. _

"Oh, poor darling," Rose coos. She tries to hold back the laughter, and she isn't sure where it's coming from, why it keeps threatening to spill out. She feels giddy, and the tips of her fingers tingle with the effort of containing it. "Is your back hurting? Should I get you some paracetamol, then? Maybe a nice appointment with the orthopedist? You really ought to take better care of yourself, _ at your age_."

His eyes open.

She freezes.

"Careful, sweetheart." Rose knows that tone. He used it last night, and she hadn't listened then to the unmistakable warning.

Reckless, she gives a wolfish smile. "You keep telling me to be careful," she whispers, "but… I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to be frightened of."

The space between them closes.

It's a very human motion, slow and intentional, as he rolls onto his side, propping his head up on his hand to match her. But he's bigger than she is, and he's looking down his nose, and you'd think he'd have a hangover or _ something _ , but his eyes are clear and bright. "Rose," he says, and the sound reverberates in her chest. They're nearly touching. "Darling, _ why am I here_?"

His voice is _ so _ gentle, so fragile, that the words nearly shatter on impact. Her heart thumps dully at this unexpected tenderness. She’s beginning to hate and love his endearments in equal parts, because she can’t work out _ what he means by them. _

"I've told you," she insists. She _ did _tell him, didn't she?

He picks up her hand—the same hand as last night—and draws it up to his mouth, palm to lips, where he doesn't kiss so much as run her skin over his, warm and full of friction. Stubble pricks at her wrist, and the tingling in her fingers intensifies. "No," he murmurs, "you haven't. You're telling me now."

"Because I _ like _you. Because," she swallows, "I want to be friends. Because," she gathers something like courage, "you need all the friends you can get."

"Right," he nods agreeably, and the movement against her sensitized, sleep-warm skin sends a little frisson up her arm. "That's very generous of you."

"No," she insists, and her voice is a bit weak. "It’s mostly self-serving curiosity."

"Those statements contradict each other, Rose."

"Both-and," she insists.

"Ah, right. I'd nearly forgotten: you contain multitudes." Every time he speaks, a current of warm air runs over her palm and a new flood of gooseflesh makes its way up her arm. His fingers have, at some point, encircled her wrist, binding her. But she has no desire to move."D'you know why _ I _think I'm here?" he asks conversationally.

She shakes her head. Or nods. She isn't sure.

"I think you're bored," he soothes. "And I think you're too smart, smarter than you think you are. I think you work at that shitty pub, night after night, serving terrible beer to milquetoast men who don't give a shit what it tastes like, getting tips for having tits and keeping your mouth shut. And I think that bores you." His hand is tighter. It's not uncomfortable, just a faint pressure against her bones that constantly reminds her he's holding her. She could break his grip, if she wanted to. But she doesn’t want to.

This shouldn't be working on her. This sort of thing _ wouldn't _work on her, only he's speaking so softly, like he understands. There's no judgment. Just a sort of… wide-eyed awe that runs counter to everything she knows about the man Malcolm Tucker. It feels so earnest and honest that she can't help believing him. She also can't know this isn't him spinning, proving some sort of point, manipulating his way into or out of her bed—though she can't tell which.

Which is probably why it feels so real.

"I think you listen to people talk bollocks all fucking day, and it makes you want to rip out your fucking eardrums and beat them like a bongo. And I think that you just want something… something that's even slightly, even just the littlest bit, _ not boring _."

He smiles, and it's sad.

He’s saying they’re the same, she realizes.

He's right. They both know he's right.

She grins, trying not to be deterred by the weight in his voice. "Is that supposed to scare me?"

"No," he answers, letting her hand drop from his face as he sits upright. He doesn’t release her wrist as it falls to the bed. His other hand sneaks up to brush a stray hair away from her cheek, tucking it softly behind her ear. "I think you _ want _ something that scares you, though. You want to be challenged; you want to use those fangs of yours to fight and fuck. You want that, and I understand why. But," he says gently, "I don't think that's what you need."

Her stomach drops.

"You need someone to treat you _ well _ , for once in your goddamn life," he continues. His hand is cupping her cheek, thumb stroking the apple of it, in time with his fingers on the flesh of her palm. It’s so consoling and apologetic and affectionate, all at once. "Sweetheart, somewhere down inside that… irritatingly optimistic, infuriatingly _ good _ heart of yours, you think that's something I can do. You don't have any evidence of it, you just _ want _ it to be true. And before you say a word, before you try to convince me you see some deep, dark, bleeding-fucking-heart part of me that nobody else has seen, before you start telling me that I can change, I just need you to know that that's not what's happening here. It’s never _ gonna _happen here. Not,” he adds, voice stern, “because I can’t. Because I fucking won’t. Got it?”

Rose wants to laugh, and perhaps cry. He's so strange, this old battle axe of a human being with his pretty blue eyes. Such a mess of contradictions, saying one thing while his voice and body and demeanor say something else. He's warning her—tenderly, warmly, kindly—that he can't be tender, warm, kind. He's treating her skin like it's paper thin, with reverence, even as he tears himself down.

She can't blame him for being this way. He's been a complete prick for most of his adult life, wearing armor until it eventually became skin. So, this is all he can do, all he can give, and for reasons that are still unknown to her, she wants to accept it. 

Call it a hunch, a feeling. Call it a fool's hope. 

He's wrong.

And even if he's not, she wants to do it anyway. If only because his hand on hers is driving her _ mad. _

"Malcolm," Rose says, finally. "Shut the fuck up.”

“Rose, please,” he starts. His hand drops from her cheek.

She’s _ quite certain _ she’s never heard him use the word ‘please' before, and it’s almost enough to push her back into stunned silence. His voice sounds strangled, as if _ it _can’t believe what he’s saying either. But she manages to shake her head and keep talking, because she just has to get it out there. The invitation. The decision she’s already made, and that she’s been making since he first stepped foot in her flat.

“No, listen.” She exhales a shaky breath. “We’ve been having the same conversation all night, and I’m finishing it. You don’t get to choose who I like, or control how I feel about you. You only control whether you want to stay in this bed or not.”

She wants to touch his face the way he touched hers, show a little of the gentleness he showed her, but one hand holds her upright and the other is in his grasp. His thumb traces a tendon, back and forth, in a rhythm that doesn't halt or hesitate.

"Do you?"

He rolls his eyes.

And then, in the space of a breath, he's kissing her.

At first, it’s too much for her slightly-hungover mind to keep track of. Warm mouth, nose against cheek, swipe of tongue, falling backwards, fingers knitting with hers, taste of whiskey, gasping for breath. She catches up to herself right in time to realize that she never actually _ contemplated _ that this could happen, and that she didn’t _ prepare _for it to happen, but somehow, it doesn’t seem to matter that she hasn’t brushed her teeth yet or run a comb through her hair in close to twenty-four hours. He kisses her with the same bruising force and energy that he does everything else, undistracted by peripherals.

Their joined hands slide up the bedspread as she sinks further into the mattress, until they’re up beside her head, interlocked fingers tangling in her hair and sheets. The weight of his body over hers creates continuous resistance, pressure for her to move against, weight and friction where she’s unused to feeling it. It’s reassuringly present, and warm.

Rose finds her neck straining, her head rising to meet his. Her teeth nip at his lips, an effort to find her footing in the maelstrom he’s bringing.

She looses her hand, slowly, from Tucker’s, and glides up his arm. She can feel skin, and muscle, and veins, and all manner of human things that a suit normally hides. Not that she doubts his humanity anymore, or thought he’d prickle at her touch. But he’s not _ just _human—he’s heated, flushing, tense. Same as her. Goosebumps rise under her fingers, and she smiles into his parted mouth.

Keeping her touch light, she steers up over the curve of his shoulder, the slope of his collarbone, and the sharply-jutting tendons on his neck until her questing fingers arrive at his face.

There’s a part of her that worries any show of tenderness will send him running. In the light of day, he might not be able to take it. But she knows _ she _can’t do this with him, not this way. He was wrong, what he said about fangs and fighting and fucking. She doesn’t want that.

She wants _ everything. _

Hesitant, she traces his jaw.

The wince breaks the kiss. His lips leave hers, but he can't stop her hand from following his face. It's strange to see color rise in his cheeks, and even stranger when he averts his eyes. She thinks he's seconds away from physically _ shaking _her off, batting her hands away from him, but he doesn't.

"Tucker," she says softly, "if we're gonna do this, you have to let me touch you."

He shakes his head once—probably a subconscious gesture—and before she can speak again, his mouth is at her throat. He’s trying to stop her voice at the source, landing short, nipping kisses on the column of her neck, drawing out little gasps instead of objections. It’s a long, slow, intentional crawl down to her clavicle, where he’s stopped by the neckline of her shirt.

It takes longer for her to extricate herself from him this time, and she’s considerably less inclined to do so as his fingers slip up her torso, drifting along her ribcage with a slowness that only _ seems _ absent-minded. But she’s certain it’s calculated to make her back arch—to make her skin flush and her breath quicken. She’s a little infuriated that he’s good at this. Or maybe it’s just been _ ages. _Probably both.

Somehow, she manages, mostly under the pretense of removing her shirt. He makes way so she can slide the fabric over her torso, leaving behind a bra she frankly can’t believe she slept in. It’s not anything special. Grey. Cotton. Comfortable. But that doesn’t stop his eyes from drifting.

When she rises to undo the clasps, he moves aside further, and she uses the opportunity to shift her weight. It’s a dirty trick, this distraction tactic, using the slow slide of the straps over her shoulders to disarm him, push him into his back, using the bracket of her denim-clad knees to keep him still. She suddenly understands the reason for his steady grip on her wrist, before. Having control is stabilizing. And heady. And it establishes distance. Distance she doesn’t intend to maintain.

The fabric slips away, and is subsequently discarded—exposed skin met with a flick of an eyebrow, a subtle dilation of pupils. She hadn’t expected more than that. Her hand lands in the center of his chest, warming through the cotton. She doesn’t let herself stay still, or give him time to overthink, or give _ herself _time to think at all. She simply drops back into their kiss, re-establishing the physical contact that’s the only thing tethering to this bed and to each other.

If this is it, she’s going to make it count.

-

"Fuck," he mutters. The curse hits her ear on a breath of warm air, sending a tremor down her spine. Rose can't answer; her mouth is presently occupied with his pulse point, getting to work on creating a mark that is probably utterly immature and thoroughly unwelcome. But he's too occupied with the activities of her hand, which has made it's careful way between the fabric of his trousers and the tented pants beneath. It's an indirect touch of a warm palm, but it's enough.

She's honestly amazed he's even letting her do this. A few minutes ago, it had been a distant thought, and now, she has her hands down the pants of perhaps the most frightening man in Britain. His fingers, previously focused on exploring the length and breadth of her now-naked body, are clasped tightly on her hips, as if holding on to the edge of a cliff. His breathing hitches.

They're approaching a tipping point, when she's going to need to stop and reach for the condom that's stuffed somewhere in the drawer of her nightstand. She's dreading it. Namely, because if she pulls away, he might stop her, stop _ this_, and if he does that, she's sure she'll implode. But his hand grasps her wrist, removing her gently from his trousers, and she pulls back to look down at him.

Tucker is still dressed. His fly is undone, yes, and the t-shirt has ridden up a bit, exposing the sharp ridges of his hipbones, but he's still almost entirely covered, but for his arms. She knows why, and she doesn't fight him on it. He's already removed as many layers as he's likely to, and as many times as her hands slither under his clothing, he won't let her shimmy anything off.

It hardly matters. The look in his eyes is so raw, so honest, and it's all she really needs. He's already exposed.

His hands are wrapped around her wrists again, holding her away from him as her hips draw little circles, and Rose shivers. “You’re a fucking nightmare,” Tucker grates out.

She laughs and pushes against him more insistently. It’s skin against wool; she’s probably soaked through it by now. The friction and the simultaneous knowledge sends a sudden pulse of heat through her. “If I was dreaming, you’d be doing a lot more with your hands.”

“_And _demanding,” he adds, loosing his fingers and trailing them downwards, over the curves of her breasts, the plane of her stomach. His touch is unbelievably gentle. “Forgive me for trying to be a fucking gentleman.”

“You’re forgiven. Now touch me.”

Eyes on hers, he does.

He surges up beneath her, capturing her lips, using her lifted hips to his advantage. Clever fingers reach the apex of her thighs, running a delicate line up and down before finding the object of his search, and spinning—quickly, firmly—in breathless little circles, pulling sounds out of Rose that she wasn't expecting to make. It's her turn for curses and pleading, all of them falling into Tucker's open mouth. A rapid stream of "please, please, please" and she just wants, she just—

“Hold on, let me—” she tries. But he’s holding her still, sinking fingers into flesh, into her hips, into _ her_. “Fuck.” The word falls past her lips, and her forehead drops to his shoulder, eyes wrenched shut, body a live wire. It’s too late. She can only hold on, follow the movement of his hands with the spiraling of her hips, and splinter. She knows, if she could look at him, he’d be smirking—victorious, unbearable, and painfully beautiful.

-

They’re both fast learners. Rose discovers that running her fingernails through his hair makes him shiver, and Tucker works out the precise pace it takes to send her gasping over the edge. Even through his shirt, she surely leaves claw-marks on his back, and he leaves carpet burn on her thighs. It isn’t gentle, but at least it’s not overtly antagonistic anymore. They’ve settled into passing the power back and forth between them, a rhythm as satisfying as the very dance of their bodies.

And as morning crawls by, they don’t leave the bed. They take what they learn, and they hold on to it.

Rose can’t say why she wants to remember the hiss he makes when she bites down, or memorize the exact roll of her hips that makes him stutter out pained expletives. She especially doesn’t dwell on the intensity of his gaze, his stark concentration when she begins to shatter and pulse around him. She doesn’t let herself examine any of it, and when he leaves—eventually, very late, very sated, with an easy smirk on his lips and his tie thrust into his trouser pocket—he doesn’t say goodbye. He whistles, walks down the hallway, away without a second glance.

She doesn’t let herself think.

She doesn’t let herself hope there will be a next time.

She doesn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this strange little snippet. Hope you enjoyed.


End file.
